by Lucas Cowen

The first sip of my espresso this morning was so thin and sour, I had no choice but to laugh. I’m still laughing, which makes journaling difficult: my letters are shaking over the lines and out of the margins, which only makes me laugh more. I’m no stranger to bad coffee, I make it all the time. I have a collection of chipped-off fragments from cups I’ve slammed in frustration. I normally just go across the street to the coffee shop, letting my over-priced espresso machine languish next to my Foreman grill, behind my six-bottle wine fridge, in an odd corner of my gerrymandered studio apartment. More often than not I use these plastic cups I got at an estate sale, as part of a tea party set, for a daughter I said I had in a panic when I locked eyes with the forty year old orphan administrating the event. Today I switched back to a ceramic cup, thinking that raising the stakes would break the curse of my mysterious inadequacy. I’m not so bad at it really, I’m usually aggressively mediocre, which isn’t the worst, but it’s not enough to get me out of bed in the morning, either. This morning, god, it was the worst coffee I’ve ever had, not just made, but ever tasted. I sputtered and dribbled instead of swallowing and started laughing and laughing and laughing.

I’ve been laughing ever since. I can’t stop. I’m having a terrible time. I didn’t go into work, but I didn’t call in sick either. There was no way I could have gotten a doctor’s note. I can’t attend to any art galleries like this, some old white lady will accuse me of “histrionics” again, and I’ve already been warned not to be dramatic when in the gallery spaces. I’ve been informed that nobody cares more about me than “Andrew Wyeth” or “John Singer-Sargent,” not to mention “James Abbott-McNeill WHISTLER!” Clearly it’s true, because my supervisor still hasn’t reached out, and neither have any of my workquaintences. “Not worth the canvas it’s painted on,” I overheard two men with “Iwo Jima Veteran” hats say about a Thomas Eakins in gallery seven-sixty-four. I think about that all the time, that must be some expensive canvas. I’m honestly surprised Stanley, a lovely old, “but not retired,” burlesque queen who started working at The MET when he was seventeen in seventy-three, hasn’t texted me. Every Thursday we smoke through our lunch break and stare at the Van Goghs until we’re ordered back to the American wing. He’s the only attendant at the museum who’s allowed to wear a hat– a purple bowler with a red feather in it. Ha, ha ha ha ha ha. No, writing it out doesn’t change anything, doesn’t make it go away, it’s not like song lyrics. I can’t believe I’m still laughing.

I just tried to drink some water; it did not go well. It spilled all over my shirt and the cartoon of a mosquito jumping over twelve fly-swatters on a chopper that I was working on. I call him Evel Mhaskieter, The Bloodsucking Daredevil. I’ve got a bunch of strips lying around, tucked in drawers, stuck three-quarters of the way into books I decided not to finish, all kinds of places. I can’t say I’ve gotten very good feedback on them. I know I’m not exactly a gifted illustrator, but the main issue is that people don’t seem to find the scenes funny. I don’t know, they make me laugh, but I guess that’s not a very good indication, certainly not today. My favorite, I showed it to Sandra– we’re “taking a break” right now, but we’re both past thirty-five, so I don’t know what the hell that’s supposed to mean or accomplish. I don’t want to meet anybody new, so as far as I’m concerned we’re broken up and I’m going to die alone. Huh, it does seem funny when I’m forced to laugh at it. A bit dark, but still funny, it’s very me– anyways, my favorite strip I’ve ever done, I showed it to Sandra and she didn’t even crack a smile. Basically, what happens is that Evel is late for school, he wakes up and realizes his alarm didn’t go off, and he’s like “Uh-oh, I missed the bus!” so he loads himself into a cannon and shoots himself towards the school. He’s whizzing through the air, he passes a wasp, then a hawk, and says “How’s that for the birds and the bees?” and then catches up with the bus as it pulls in front of the school. Right as he’s about to pass the pass and land, the bus stops and the stop-sign-thing comes out, which he crashes through, face first. His little blood-sucky nose-thing gets all bent up and he says “Did I graditate?” I don’t know, I think that’s funny, that kind of thing always makes me laugh.

I’m getting crazy thirsty. I can’t really do anything. I tried jogging around my apartment before, I thought getting tired would make it stop, but I’m still laughing, and now I’m so much more thirsty, but I can’t swallow anything. I’m like a sick kid again, but there’s nobody here to help me. To be fair, I haven’t asked anyone for help, I don’t like to be a burden. Kids don’t mind being burdens, you’ve gotta respect that about them. It used to upset me, their tantrums and their grumpy light-up stomping in the galleries at The MET, but they’re just expressing themselves. They don’t care that they’re in some big building with old stuff that someone else thinks is important, they don’t want to see any abstract renderings of animals unless it’s in cracker-form, and that’s fair enough. The museum is a weird place for a kid to be, there are so many rules, and none of them are written down. People don’t take it easy on kids at the museum, generally, people just complain, to me. “Can you do something about that?” they say, then point their bony white fingers. They always make it about themselves, “It’s really damaging my experience,” they always talk the way therapist characters in TV shows talk. You know what’s crazy? They’re the ones that I always catch touching the art, knowingly breaking the good rules. They all act like they own the place, regardless of whether they’re in Payless or Gucci, whether they’re in the American Wing or the African.

Finally, someone called me. I was hoping it would be a call, not a text, so I could demonstrate my ailment, or condition, or whatever it is, but just before I accepted the call I realized nobody was going to believe me. It’s unbelievable, I’ve been laughing for six hours non-stop. It was Cynthia that called me. She’s cool, she’s like forty-five or something maybe, kind of my boss but not really, definitely above me, definitely does way more work than our supervisor, definitely gets paid more than me, but not that much more, not enough more, and she doesn’t have any extra benefits or an office, and yeah, she’s functionally my boss, she’s the person I deal with most of the time, but also nobody’s breathing down her neck on anything because then they’d have to admit they don’t treat her right. Anyways, she called me and the first thing I said was “I promise I’m not high,” you know, trying to preempt the assumption about my laughing? But that’s probably the highest thing I could have said. She was strictly business: “What do I care about you being high, Oscar? But you can’t no-show, that’s some weak shit, nobody went to cover seven-seventy during the first hour and during the change Albert caught someone wiping their freaking snot on Bringing Down Marble from the Quarries to Carrara.” “Oh shit, who was it?” “Who do you think? Some Lady Who Lunches on the Westside and hasn’t been taken out or eaten out by her husband in a decade.” I wonder how much I would have laughed at that if I hadn’t already been laughing. “Anyways,” she went on, “that shit’s on you, so I need you to fill in member hours shifts for the rest of the month to make up for it, that cool?” “Yeah, that’s fair,” she hung up. She didn’t even really come down on me, that was nice of her. I’ve never seen her really come down on anyone. Our supervisor always finds something to yell at someone about. One time he was taking a board member on a private tour and Cynthia corrected him about something. He started laying into her, but then the board member said, “Careful, you might be yelling at your next boss right now.” Albert heard the whole thing, he was stationed across the hall. Our supervisor got so mad and embarrassed, he just left, surrendered, and Cynthia picked up the private tour. Albert says she got tipped like five-hundred bucks, but there’s no way he could know that. Cynthia doesn’t just know about things from working for a long time, she doesn’t just like art, she knows all about art history and stuff. I like art enough to be happy looking at paintings all day, and I know enough to answer most questions about works where I get stationed, but Cynthia knows about, like, everything. When things get changed around and we have all-staff meetings she always lights Curatorial up with questions. The Education interns are always crowding around her, with their Docs and bad haircuts. The Education department in general adores her, she’s been going to a lot of their meetings recently. She’s cool, I wish I didn’t seem like such a fool to her just now.

I can’t even watch anything. Not TV or YouTube or nothing, I’m in so much pain. I’m in a little ball on my side on the floor now. My niece Fernanda called me to say a boy in her class proposed to her. She’s in first-grade so it’s not real, but I think that kind of stuff is serious. I just laughed and laughed. She laughed too, she didn’t think I was laughing at her, which is good, I was worried she would. She’s a kid, she likes to laugh, but I’m still worried, I’m worried that might be a core memory for her, uncle Oscar turning her first love into a joke on the phone. I wish I’d settled down earlier, or taken being with someone more seriously. I liked the idea of being single, I liked single characters in movies and on TV. There’s not so much in that though, it’s not such a fulfilling life unless you’re always pulling, in which case why not just be in a relationship? Oh– Evel could be, like, unlucky in love, he could be buzzing around all these people, and they’re all swatting at him and he’s trying to kiss them but they think he’s trying to suck their blood, and he’s dodging but eventually this one hand hits him, a hand with red acrylics and some Cartier on, and you see a speech bubble from whoever the hand belongs to and it says, “How do you like that?!” and he goes, “Baby, you just rocked my world!” No, no that’s stupid, that doesn’t make sense. Maybe I should put the birds and bees pun in that strip instead… No, no, who cares, god, no one cares, it doesn’t matter. I’m so thirsty, and tired, and sad, god, I hope I never laugh again. Ha ha ha ha. Shit, that still doesn’t help.

Lucas Cowen is a bartender in New York.